View a FREE sample

This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. For Eagleton, how did the romantics usher a "forestalling of reasoned critical enquiry"?
(a) Because the word was seen as a refleciton of religious truths that you either saw or didn't see.
(b) Because the text was regarded as a reflection of society that you either saw or didn't see.
(c) Because the symbol was regarded as an absolute spiritual truth that you either saw or didn't see.
(d) Because the image was seen as material reality that you saw immediately.

2. The German philosopher Edmund Husserl argued that objects can be regarded as things ______ by consciousness.
(a) Intended.
(b) Understood.
(c) Evaluated.
(d) Realized.

3. For Eagleton, E.D. Hirsch attempts to "offer a form of knowledge" that is what?
(a) Temporary.
(b) Timeless.
(c) Telling.
(d) Titular.

4. Both F.R. Leavis and Edmund Husserl seek to grasp the thing in itself, or the ______for Husserl and ______for Leavis.
(a) Eidos; life.
(b) Idea; life.
(c) Idea; essence.
(d) Image; eidos.

5. Eagleton argues that the criteria for what counted as literature in the eighteenth-century was what?
(a) Religious.
(b) Ideological.
(c) Practical.
(d) Canonical.

6. Eagleton argues that if literature includes much factual writing, it also excludes "quite a lot of" what?
(a) Nonfiction.
(b) Autobiography.
(c) Biography.
(d) Fiction.

7. Eagleton argues that for Stanley Fish, what a text "does" to us is a matter of what we do to what?
(a) To the critic.
(b) To the author.
(c) To the text.
(d) To the reader.

8. According to Eagleton, why is Hans-Georg Gadamer not concerned about bringing our cultural preconceptions to a literary work?
(a) Because unlike the literary work, the come from tradition.
(b) Because like the literary work, they come from modernity.
(c) Because unlike the literary work, they come from modernity.
(d) Because like the literary work, they come from tradition.

9. According to Viktor Shklovsky, what novel was "the most typical novel in world literature" because it impeded its own story-line so that it never gets off the ground?
(a) "History of the Rebellion."
(b) "Animal Farm."
(c) "Tristram Shandy."
(d) "Don Quixote."

10. Who was Husserl's most famous pupil who broke with his system of thought?
(a) Ayn Rand.
(b) Walter Benjamin.
(c) Martin Heidegger.
(d) Hannah Arendt.

11. What is the name of the pioneering essay the Russian formalist wrote that is the "beginnings of the transformation which has taken over literary theory in this century"?
(a) Theory as Practise.
(b) Film as Thought.
(c) Art as Device.
(d) Literature as Image.

12. What is "imaginative" literature or literature that is not necessarily true?
(a) Fiction.
(b) Biography.
(c) Memoir.
(d) Nonfiction.

13. What is the name of the economist Eagleton discusses in his preface?
(a) I. Fischer.
(b) Adam Smith.
(c) J. M. Keynes.
(d) Gordon Tuck.

14. Who was glad to abandon the "feminine vagaries of literature" in favor of penning war propaganda?
(a) Lord Byron.
(b) Matthew Arnold.
(c) Walter Raleigh.
(d) George Gordon.

15. The Russian formalists rejected what kind of doctrines that had influenced literary criticism?
(a) Quasi-mystical fictional doctrines.
(b) Quasi-mystical religious doctrines.
(c) Quasi-mystical psychoanalytic doctrines.
(d) Quasi-mystical symbolist doctrines.

Short Answer Questions

1. What genre of writing does Eagleton provide that is an example of writing that is NOT considered to be literature?

2. According to Eagleton, why is E.D. Hirsch able to maintain his view that literary meaning is absolute and resistant to historical change?

3. For the economist Eagleton discusses, "those economists who dislike theory or claimed to get along better without it" were what?

4. How do linguists describe the effect of language where "the texture, rhythm and resonance of words are in excess of their abstractable meaning."

5. According to Eagleton, in the romantic aesthetic theory the meaning of the word literature became what?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 643 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample